Hello
again everyone. Last month I explained why this Report would no longer
offer a detailed listing of the Board of Commissioners decisions or actions.
The Board is now offering the audio recordings of the Board of Commissioner’s
meetings online, in an MP3 format. The Josephine County website.

I hope
you take the time to listen.

Commentary

There
are two topics I want to talk about this month. First, I want to explain
in more detail about what is going on in the Commissioner’s Office. Second,
I want to offer my opinion on a much broader and much more important topic
that affects all of us: The Environmentalist Industry.

1)
The Commissioners Office

I reported
last month that Commissioners Toler and Ellis had decided to replace our
open Chief Operating Officer position with the new position of Chief
Administrative Officer.

I opposed
that decision.

I’m
glad to report that Commissioner Ellis decided to reverse his original
position and voted with me to leave this position vacant. Commissioner
Toler was visibly upset by this decision, which is not surprising since
he is politically committed to the concept of replacing elected management
of county government with appointed management.

For
now, each Commissioner will be assigned the Chief Operating Officer’s
management duties and authorities for the areas of county government that
they were liaison to previously. This will save nearly $150,000 per year.
I want to publicly commend and thank Commissioner Ellis for making this
sound, fiscally responsible decision.

For
the record, here are the areas each commissioner is now responsible for
managing:

Dave
Toler:
Public Health Division (including one Mental Health employee)
Parks Program
Commission on Children and Families

Jim
Raffenburg:
Public Works Division
Facilities Division
Planning Program
Building and Safety Program
Forestry Program
Airports Program
Fairgrounds
Property Management Program

As already
noted, Commissioner Toler was not happy with this fiscally responsible
decision and in a January 23, 2008 newspaper article, he lashed out, falsely
claiming the current management efforts are not working, saying the Board
of Commissioners is “micro-managing every little decision”.

The
next day, Commissioner Toler then held an “emergency” press conference
inside the Courthouse to not only reaffirm his commitment to replacing
the open position, but to affirm his dedication to installing a county
manger form of government. In this press conference, Toler said, “the
Board is frustrated” with the current management situation.

Chair
Toler’s statement is simply false.

I was
in Salem on county business on Wednesday and Thursday that week and I
checked with Commissioner Ellis on Friday to see if the Board (Toler and
Ellis) had taken a position saying the “Board” was frustrated with the
current situation. Commissioner Ellis told me no and said he was not frustrated.
Since I was not part of any such conversation, it is clear that the “Board”
is not frustrated.

This
is a very important point and it goes right to the core of my reason for
not supporting Dave Toler being made Chair of the Board of Commissioners.
He has now used his position as Chair to mislead the public to promote
his personal political agenda for changing county government. In my opinion
he has abused his position as Chair.

Last
year, Commissioner Ellis and I had to warn Dave twice to stop saying things
like “the Board feels this way….” when speaking to the public and the
press, when in fact it was only Dave who felt that way. This latest episode
of misleading the public shows that Dave’s behavior has not changed and
that he is not willing to be constrained by the requirements of his position
as Chair.

The
issue here is not that Dave Toler Commissioner cannot say
these things. He can.

But
Dave Toler, Chair cannot. The position of Chair can only
speak for the Board after the Board has taken a position
on an issue. In this instance, the Board has not done so.

Dave
has also gone to great pains trying to distinguish between the words “govern”
and “manage.” Dave continuously says the Board needs to “govern” instead
of “manage” county programs.

My dictionary
defines “govern” as “to administer” and it defines “manage” as “…to conduct;
guide; administer” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary). Why would anyone
try to make such an unfounded distinction?

For
Dave to draw such a distinction between these two words, when no such
distinction exists in fact, leads one to think there is some unspoken
agenda at work.

To be
fair, all politicians have political agendas. My agenda is to maintain
as small an organization of county government as is practical, and to
provide only those services desired by the People, at a cost that is also
affordable by the People.

By self-admission,
one of Dave Toler’s political agendas is to change the face of county
government. Again, in my opinion, based upon what I have seen and heard,
Dave seems to want to separate the concepts off “governing” and “managing”
because he is not comfortable with a government “decision making” structure
that is directly accountable to the people.

The
day-to-day decisions of government bureaucracy have direct impacts on
peoples lives and by giving direct control of that decision making authority
to any appointed position is contrary to the very principles of self-government.

2)
The Environmentalist Industry

There
was a time when working hard at skilled labor earned a family wage paycheck.
There was a time when utilizing abundant, renewable resources was just
common sense.
There was a time when reason was the predominant factor in managing modern
life.
There was a time when Americans could work out their differences in ways
that allowed everyone to feel they were part of the solution.
Those days appear to be gone.

What
happened?

I’m
a boomer. I grew-up in the 1960’s. It was an era of doubt, fear and anger.
I, along with most of my peers, went on to adulthood and got over these
feelings. Others in my generation covered-up the doubt, fear and anger
with music and drugs.

Instead
of getting over those feelings, they gave into them and became immersed
in a counter-culture that was a ripe recruiting ground for alternative
political philosophies, ranging from Nihilism to Socialism/Marxism to
Anarchy, all of which played into and cultivated those strong emotions.

Many
of the people who experimented with alternative political philosophies
became the leaders of the modern Environmentalist Industry. In Europe,
during the late 1960’s, the Green Movement was birthed from the Communist
and Socialist parties of Norway and West Germany, initially as an anti-American
movement. It was supported by the Soviet Union, and it’s leaders simply
exchanged red banners for green ones.

I’m
not saying that all environmentalists are Communists or Socialists, just
pointing out that the initial leadership of this movement was such, and
that the current anti-private property rights agenda of the Green Movement
is hard to distinguish from the agenda of its founders.

By 1980,
the (Green) Environmentalist Industry had become firmly established in
the United States and was strong enough to begin to cause real change
in our region.

For
the past twenty-eight years, the Environmentalist Industry has quietly
grown stronger and more organized. Today they are a political force to
be reckoned with. In fact, their strategy of negotiate and then litigate
has served them well. With the Northwest Forest Plan, facilitated by President
Clinton in 1993, the leadership of a vast array of environmental organizations
agreed to and signed off on a plan that would again allow some timber
harvests, reduced by seventy-five percent from what had been in the 1980’s.
Those harvests never happened.

The
timber industry and local governments had entered those Northwest Forest
Plan talks with an open mind, assuming their reasonable approach and willingness
to compromise would be met with the same level of commitment and good
faith from the Green Environmentalist Industry. They were wrong.

The
first time the BLM tried to put a timber sale up for bid under the Northwest
Forest Plan, they were sued (by “other” environmentalists). That is their
game. They posture as “reasonable” people when it advances their agenda.
Then they sue when they cannot get you to voluntarily give them everything
they wanted during the negotiation process. By virtue of their past actions,
they cannot be seen as anything even approaching reasonable.

There
is a reason for their behavior. They have a long-term agenda for this
country, a political agenda that is grounded in the alternative political
philosophies of their initial Norwegian and German founders. Their leadership
today is comprised of professional political organizers who specialize
in careful planning to make it appear that “average” people are “spontaneously”
rising in protest on this or that issue.

The
Green Environmentalist Industry is a political movement with a grim determination
to revolutionize this country’s political structure and the way we live
as a people.

This
movement’s political agenda is not compatible with the existing political
system of basic freedoms we Americans cherish. Our freedoms are “natural”
freedoms, which exist outside of any government ability to grant or decree.
They cannot be restricted or taken away by any government authority, legitimate
or not, because they are endowed to us by our Creator. They can only be
suppressed or abandoned by human action or inaction.

The
Green Agenda is to convince you to “voluntarily” abandon as many
freedoms as they can, in the name of the environment. They will then suppress
whatever freedom is left, by removing your ability to influence your own
political future. This would be done by eliminating representative government
at the local level, and replacing that representative government with
appointed “managers” who are not accountable to the electorate.

Sound
familiar?

Now
you know why I am so opposed to Commissioner Dave Toler’s Agenda.

Dave
is a former organizer for the Social Justice Alliance and he presumably
still supports SJA ideals.

Those
ideals include a core philosophy that claims “the root of all injustice
is caused by the accumulation of (private) wealth”, and that the “cure”
is the “redistribution of that wealth”. This is not a new philosophy.
It has been around for 150 years. Norwegian and German Green/Reds know
it very well. So do the Russians, Chinese, East Europeans and Cubans.
It is a great tragedy that more Americans do not recognize it for what
it is.

I promised
to tell you the truth even when it hurts. For some of you, this information
will hurt, but I pray you listen. If you do not, the real pain we all
experience in the future may be vastly worse for all of us who do not
want our private wealth “redistributed”.

Once
again, thank you for taking the time to read this Report.

Jim Raffenburg

P.S.:
I’m adding a footnote to this Report because of the nature of the subject
matter.

This
Report needed to be blunt. The casual reader might think
my language regarding a fellow commissioner is too strong. Under normal
circumstances, it would be. But these are not “normal” times, for this
county or for this country. As an elected representative of the People,
it is my job to keep you informed on issues I believe will affect your
future.

It is
my belief, based upon personal observation and experience that the very
principles of our Republic are under a subversive assault from adherents
of an alien political philosophy. The assault has been gradual, but relentless.

While
our State and National Constitutions guarantee religious and political
freedom, even for those who wish to destroy those very same freedoms,
there is no obligation for the rest of us to sit back and watch as social
change agents actively try to dismantle our freedoms because
we are afraid of “infringing” on their political rights to believe what
they do. They are free to believe anything they want to, but once they
“take action” to infringe on the freedoms of others, they cross a very
important line, violating the social contract at the very core of our
society.

State
and National Constitutions are not mutual suicide pacts.

Those
who want to dismantle our freedoms will never openly say that is what
they want to do, because they know they would not succeed if they did.
Instead, they chip away at the fringes, so we do not recognize the
threat as a threat, until the very system of government itself
crumbles due to neglect and/or internal stress.

There
is no alternative for the average citizen other than to take a stand for
what they believe is their vital self-interest.

No elected
official, in any elected office, can preserve your freedoms.

Only
you can do that.

Elected
officials can only protect those freedoms by avoiding any official action
that infringes on them. When that avoidance is not enough, then it is
the obligation of those elected officials who respect their office and
their duties as public servants, to warnthe People
of the threat to individual Liberty. It is then up to the People to respond.

Commissioner
Jim Raffenburg is serving in his first term as Josephine County Commissioner
(Oregon). He was elected in November, 2004. He is married and lives with
his wife in the North Valley area. Jim served eight years as either Chair
or Vice-Chair of the Josephine County Rural Planning Commission and served
two years as a Josephine County reserve Deputy Sheriff. He is a trained,
Court mediator. Previous work experience is in both the private and public
sectors. He has worked in heavy, commercial construction and construction
management most of his life, including serving as Construction Administrator
for NASA.

Those
who want to dismantle our freedoms will never openly say that is what
they want to do, because they know they would not succeed if they did.
Instead, they chip away at the fringes, so we do not recognize the
threat as a threat, until the very system of government itself
crumbles due to neglect and/or internal stress.